I bought a Tenda W311U USB WLAN dongle after reading purchaser reviews online that it worked with Linux straight from the box. Well it doesn't on my old laptop.

I'm a Linux novice and any advice you could possibly offer would need to be practically step-by-step - but is it possible to get this device working with VL6 or Linux in general?

VL6 WiCD doesn't find any wireless networks. Using a Puppy Linux live disc, the laptop finds the adapter as a RaLink RT2800 using a rt2800usb driver - but it won't connect and doesn't find any wireless extensions.

If you have the time, Nightflier, that might be helpful as I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I need to get it sorted, if it's possible to get it working, so I can give it to a friend to use for browsing and email. I'll try studying those links in the meantime.

Thanks for your help. I followed all your line by line commands but the laptop sadly still doesn't detect any wireless networks. Everything seemed to have gone ok with the commands, though I did notice a couple of times it said something like 'parameter not found' when doing the make or make installs (can't remember which). Are there any log files anywhere that I can paste on here? The folders seem to have been made correctly in the correct user's folder, so i was really hoping this would work.

We should have better wifi support in VL7, you might want to "give it a try" on a VL7 livecd and see if that works better. As you've heard before, that device should work "out of the box" but I bet VL6 is just a 'lil too old for it to work without tinkering.

If it works good for you on the VL7 livecd, then grab our GG Gold installer iso and install the latest and greatest VL 7.0 Gold edition!

I changed the Wireless Interface setting to ra0. On the External Programs tab I've got everything set to automatic.

After these settings were changed as above, the laptop now finds the availalble wireless networks, but I can't connect to any of them. I can't connect to my own router, nor could I get it to connect to my friend's network, for whom this is being done. When I try to connect it says - 'Resetting IP address' then 'Obtaining IP address' - then there's a long wait until it says 'Not connected'. It does this with my own Belkin router and my friend's BT router. I've checked the passwords and protocols as well as I'm able. I've also tried various combinations of security protocols, just to see, but still haven't been successful. So I'm stuck again.

I also downloaded the VL7 live CD, as suggested, which boots ok and the progress bar goes all the way to the right, but then it just cycles round and round between a black screen and a few seconds of showing the progress bar all the way across. My thoughts are that this very old laptop, with only 128MB RAM (which I've been unable to find compatible memory upgrades), is happy running VL6 Light, but not VL7 live. Any chance of a VL7 Light CD soon? So i was unable to see if VL7 will cooperate with the Tenda W311U.

Any further help or advice would be gratefully received. I'm hopeful htis problem can be cracked, it's just finding the way.

Use iwconfig for ESSID and also that it is connected by looking atAccesss Point.

You can have you output redirected by using:

command > nameoffile

Then all of the output will go to a file you can use.

With the very limited information. I would venture to guess thatit is the encryption that is the problem. Turn off the encryption and then try you connection. If it connects then you at least know wherethe failure is. Then proceed from there.

If there is a connection but no communication look at ifconfig tosee if an ipaddress is assigned.

I never had to change that setting on any of my machines, try setting it back to default.

Quote

I also downloaded the VL7 live CD, as suggested, which boots ok and the progress bar goes all the way to the right, but then it just cycles round and round between a black screen and a few seconds of showing the progress bar all the way across. My thoughts are that this very old laptop, with only 128MB RAM (which I've been unable to find compatible memory upgrades), is happy running VL6 Light, but not VL7 live. Any chance of a VL7 Light CD soon? So i was unable to see if VL7 will cooperate with the Tenda W311U.

*Success!* I couldn't see a 'default' WPA setting, but set it to the first entry of 'wext' and it connected and I've been online with it. Excellent! It was my fault for changing the setting to 'ralink legacy driver', I'd done that because i'd misunderstood the iwconfig report of 'no wireless extensions' and had changed that before selecting ra0. If i'd set things to ra0 first, the problem wouldn't have arisen.

I do need encryption turned on for my network. I'll try connecting to my friend's network as soon as possible, but hopefully it's just a matter of setting the appropriate protocol and password.

I updated VL6 with the package manager, but have a couple of final questions, if that's ok:

Firefox and Opera report that i'm not using the latest versions when they start. Should i leave them as they are, because of the laptop's low resources, or should i update them to the latest versions (and how do i do that, if so)?

Do i need to install a firewall?

How can I activate automatic login?

The laptop is for a friend who has practically no computer knowledge - she just needs to be able to start it up easily, open a broswer to search the internet and check her webmail and then shut it down easily - without having to worry about viruses and updates. I turned to Linux because Windows just wouldn't run on this machine with an anti-virus program installed. VL6 looked to be the best distro due to its low resource requirements and its appearance.

Thank you all very much indeed for your help. Can't thank you enough. Thanks especially to nightflier for your patience and detailed answers.

Glad to hear you got it working. Kudos for sticking to it and not giving up too easily!

You want a current browser. As far as keeping Firefox up to date, here is another thread about that:http://forum.vectorlinux.com/index.php?topic=14007.msg84989#msg84989You will need to browse to the download location to get the very latest version.Once installed in this fashion, you can update FF simply by running it as root and letting it auto-update.

Opera can be maintained in a similar way, I'd have to experiment some to come up with the exact steps.

Firewall: If your friend is behind a wireless router with encryption, I would not worry about it.

Autologin: Look on the menu, under "System", there should be an entry for that.

It seems VL6 Light won't autoconnect wirelessly to my router on startup - I have to run Wicd to get it to connect (even though it is set to automatically connect in Wicd and does so when Wicd is run). Is there a way to automatically get Wicd to run on startup, because unless my friend can just turn on and connect without doing anything except launch the browser, she's going to get confused and frustrated with it.

I couldn't find any options to automatically log in a user without a password (to VL, i mean). The 'System' menu on this machine doesn't seem to have any options to set that.